Sabrina Lekaj murder: Killer father who stabbed 20-yr-old to death gets life for 'catastrophic breach' of bond
Convicted heroin trafficker Petrit Lekaj has been sentenced at least to 20 years in jail for stabbing his daughter Sabrina, 20, around eight times in rage.
Supreme Court of South Australia Justice Trish Kelly sentenced Lekaj, 49, to life imprisonment with a no-parole period of around 20 years. Lekaj murdered his daughter in the western Adelaide suburb of Kidman Park last July. The court had heard on February 26 that Lekaj had confronted his daughter about her partying lifestyle and the use of recreational drugs.
He ended up stabbing her around eight times during the conversation. Lekaj proceeded to drive around at a very slow speed with her body still in the car for around an hour and a half before the police stopped him. Justice Kelly shared that Lekaj's actions were a 'catastrophic breach' of the bond between a father and daughter.
Kelly shared that Lekaj had become 'incensed' and had 'lost his temper' when Sabrina did not respond to him the way he had expected when he spoke to her about the partying. "The bond between a parent and a child is ordinarily fundamental. However it is not my role to search for the meaning or the reason you committed this offense," Kelly said.
She also added it was 'ironic' that Lekaj had confronted his daughter about drug use when "you too experimented with illicit drugs". During the 1990s, Lekaj had spent four and a half years in prison for trafficking heroin. He also has two cannabis convictions in 2007 and 2009.
Lekaj's lawyer Ben Sale had earlier told the court that his client had carried a 15-centimeter knife along with him when he had gone to get takeaway food with his daughter that night. He had stabbed her in the abdomen while he was in the driver's seat and she was in the passenger's seat.
He then moved behind her, strangled her, and stabbed her seven more times until she died. "It was the realization that his daughter — the apple of his eye — has been lying; she's been living another life with friends that involve the use of drugs. It wasn't a frenzied attack committed in a moment of provocation but a deliberate decision to get out of the car, back in the car, to continue to stab until she's dead. The prisoner is troubled by his own motivations as anyone else is," Sale said.